The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life

The way we deal with life -- with love and sex, pleasure and death, reality and making stuff up -- can change dramatically when we stop believing in gods, souls, and afterlives. When we leave religion -- or if we never had it in the first place -- where do we go? More

So you're an atheist. Now what?

The way we deal with life -- with love and sex, pleasure and death, reality and making stuff up -- can change dramatically when we stop believing in gods, souls, and afterlives. When we leave religion -- or if we never had it in the first place -- where do we go?

With her unique blend of compassion and humor, thoughtfulness and snark, Greta Christina most emphatically does not propose a single path to a good atheist life. She offers questions to think about, ideas that may be useful, and encouragement to choose your own way. She addresses complex issues in an accessible, down-to-earth style, including:

Why we're hereSexual transcendenceThe meaning of lifeThe meaning of deathFrivolitySensualityHow humanism helps with depression — except when it doesn’tStealing stuff from religionWhy atheism demands social justiceDifferent ways to be a good personJoy

and much more.

Aimed at new and not-so-new atheists, questioning and curious believers, Christina ("Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God," "Coming Out Atheist," "Why Are You Atheists So Angry?") shines a warm, fresh light on the only life we have.

Greta Christina is one of the most widely-read and well-respected bloggers in the atheist blogosphere. She blogs at the cleverly named Greta Christina's Blog (http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta), and is a regular contributor to the online political magazine, AlterNet. She was ranked by an independent analyst as one of the Top Ten most popular atheist bloggers, and her writing has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and anthologies, including Ms., Penthouse, Skeptical Inquirer, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the anthology Everything You Know About God Is Wrong. She is editor of the Best Erotic Comics anthology series and of Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients, and is author of Bending, an erotic novella in the three- novella collection Three Kinds of Asking For It. She has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, skepticism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is on the speakers' bureaus of the Secular Student Alliance and the Center for Inquiry. She tweets at @GretaChristina. She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid.